According to Tooley’s Dictionary Captain Nicholas Dobree (1678-1751) was an agent of the Admiralty. He was the first to properly survey the Channel Islands and produced three charts, all published in 1746 and engraved by Emanuel Bowen. The three are a a general map of the Channel Islands, one of Guernsey and one of Alderney. The last chart offered here is the rarest of the three, as the other two were issued again by William Faden in 1796. The Alderney was not reprinted as it was included as an inset on the general chart instead. Indeed the only example that could be traced in a British Institution can be found at the National Maritime Museum. The map is ungraduated with the tides races indicated, a few soundings, a scale of miles and is decorated with ships.

dobree was one of the leading merchants in St. Peter Port in the first half of the eighteenth century. His monument in the Town Church states that he devoted himself to the security of navigation, the improvement of the harbour and to the construction of the Town Hospital. In the 1740s the merchants of Guernsey worked hard to develop St. Peter Port as an international trading centre. They built some 20-30 new warehouses. One of the obstacles to building trade was the fierce reputation of the waters in and around the Channel Islands. This was mitigated by the charts produced by Dobree. The distribution of the charts was handled by the Hospital. Their accuracy proved to be of considerable benefit to the islands considerably boosting trade. Provenance: By descent from the Dobree family itself and sold at a Phillips auction by Peter Dobree 16 February 1995 lot 80; private collection.